Typical cloud forest in the Intag region of Ecuador. Photo Credit: author
Imagine living in one of the most beautiful and biodiverse places on Earth: the Intag region of Northwest Ecuador. It’s a land blessed with clean rivers, dozens of waterfalls, pristine cloud forests, and small, peaceful agricultural communities. The soil is fertile, the landscape breathtaking. These forests are a sanctuary for over 100 plant and animal species facing extinction and support local communities earning a living through ecotourism.
The Twins waterfalls, just two of several inside the mining concession. Photo Credit: Author
Now, picture this: a transnational mining company arrives. A spokesperson announces they have acquired the rights to mine copper in this unique and tranquil land – all without consulting local communities or governments(1).
The spokesperson explains that the 4,829 hectare Llurimagua mining concession, as it is known, lies amidst primary cloud forests that are the source of 43 rivers and streams. It’s an area dotted with pre-Incan archaeological sites and situated within the Tropical Andes, the most biodiverse of the planet’s 36 Biodiversity Hotspots. The very forests targeted for mining by Chile’s Codelco are home to jaguars, Andean bears, toucans, three species of monkeys (one critically endangered), two types of sloths, anteaters, and 24 frog species, all teetering on the brink of extinction. Two of these frog species exist only within the mining concession area and nowhere else on Earth. One is confined to a single micro-watershed. As for the flora, 5,000-hectares (12,500-acre) of Intag’s forests boasts more orchid species than all of the United States and Canada combined(2).
The Intag Resistance Rocket Frog (Ectopoglossus sp.) species new to science is endemic to the mining concession. Photo credit: Author
Beneath this incredible natural and cultural wealth lies a copper deposit. However, extracting it comes at a steep price. Water contamination from mining can persist for hundreds, even thousands, of years. In Intag, as with all of Ecuador’s copper deposits, the ore is mixed with highly toxic substances, including lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and chromium. (Take a moment to research their health effects.) Furthermore, mining sulfide copper ores inevitably leads to Acid Mine Drainage, which can render water as acidic as battery fluid. This toxic runoff not only kills aquatic life on contact but also accelerates the leaching of heavy metals from mine waste.
Primary cloud forests in the middle of the mining concession. Photo Credit: Author
To make way for the mine, several communities would face forced relocation. Hundreds of families would lose their homes, land, and livelihoods. The deforestation of thousands of hectares would disrupt the local climate, drying conditions threatening thousands of small farmers who depend on rainfall for their crops(3).
If approved, this open-pit mine would operate for three decades at most, contributing less than 1% annually to the world’s copper supply.
Collahuasi copper mine in Chile’s Atacama desert Photo credit: https://shorturl.at/sIiIS
Many would see this mine as bringing “development” to Ecuador, in addition to a necessary evil to combat climate change (supplying copper for the energy transition). Yet, this label is applied even as the project promises to decimate thousands of hectares of biodiverse carbon-storing forests, uproot hundreds of families from several communities, destroy habitats crucial for countless species, while contaminating rivers and streams for millennia and undermining the livelihoods of thousands of small farmers.
What would you call it?
Orchid bees pollinating Lycomormium orchid in Intag’s cloud Forest. Photo credit: Carlos Zorrilla
Notes:
1.The communities in Intag have stopped six mining companies from four countries from advancing mining development in the region since 1995, but the threat persists (Japanese, Canadian, Australian and Chilean)
2. Over 200 species of orchids-some new to science- have been identified in the nearby and heavily researched Los Cedros Biological Station, which harbors identical forest as that found in the Llurimagua mining concession and is of similar size (https://loscedrosreserve.org/orchids/)
3.These and many other social and environmental impacts were reported in a preliminary Environmental impact Study undertaken by Japanese scientist in the mid 1990’s based on a copper ore deposit a fraction of what the government of Ecuador now believes the concession may have.
For more details, visit www.decoin.org and www.codelcoecuador.com
Suggested further reading: https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/in-ecuador-communities-protecting-a-terrestrial-coral-reef-face-a-mining-giant
